


Let me spell it out for you

by tyrantmoves



Category: Deus Ex (Video Games), Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Genre: Adam is sad about being augmented, Adam needs a hug, Dubious Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, M/M, Poor Adam
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-22
Updated: 2017-03-13
Packaged: 2018-08-24 01:28:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8350927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tyrantmoves/pseuds/tyrantmoves
Summary: Ever since returning to some semblance of functionality, Adam still has a hard time adjusting. Even when he takes a leak, sometimes he looks down and wonders, who's hand is that? Then he remembers how far he's come.A collection of one shots, looking at Adam's life before and after augmentation.





	1. A like Animal

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little something I'm using to spring board my creativity. Almost beat Mankind Divided! Poor Adam, my homeboy needs some love.
> 
> It's an alphabet fic but not in the usual way, as you might soon notice.

**_After ..._ **

It started with the asian college girl across the bar, batting eyelashes at him with both boldness and immaturity. He was probably too old for her; five months ago, he would have given her a reproachful, if not paternal look, and ignored her for the rest of the night.

But four months ago, he’d had been stitched back together, a modern vaudeville puppet for the circus of  _ technology _ and  _ innovation  _ and  _ progress _ . 

Making love was not a thing he did anymore. The idea of the machine that was his body, all bolts and steel plates and gossamer threads of circuitry  _ making  _ anything was too literal these days. When he fucked, it wasn’t making anything but the time pass, and proof that somewhere buried under all that wiring there was still a primal animal, something atavistic that reassured him where it used to scare.

So when the flirty but naive girl slid into the bar stool next to his, her frat boy and sorority girl friends playing pool, throwing knowing glances their way, his fists clenched up around his beer and he kept his eyes forward. 

“Nice tech,” she commented, trying to drop her voice low to something sultry, but mostly coming across as monotone. He said nothing; she fidgeted in her chair.

_ Typical _ , Adam thought with more loathing than he knew he was capable of experiencing. Even the smallest habits of natural humans annoyed him, igniting jealousy thinly masked as repulsion. Naturals always felt the need to  _ twitch _ and  _ shuffle  _ and move. In his chrome skin, not a single spark of motion occurred until he very intentionally willed it.

“What else you hiding under all that jacket?” she tried to joke, sounding more confident. Soon, her confidence would turn to scorn if he didn’t acknowledge her. Four months cut off from the world hadn’t changed that truth.

He turned to survey her without retracting the visors covering his eyes. She was wearing cut off denim shorts and a plaid button-up, twisted into a knot just above her navel, showing off her flat young stomach. Her shiny black hair fell over her skin and Adam thought,  _ god _ (was he even allowed to say that anymore? Were there gods for machines?), what would a woman’s hair feel like under his gunmetal hands? Would he still appreciate its softness, it’s health? 

Half an hour later, back at his Sarif Industries owned apartment (would Sarif rent him out too, eventually? Sign him off for a twelve month lease to the highest bidder?), he realized it didn’t matter if he could feel her hair with his hands. He also realized that from this day forward, he appreciated women who didn’t rip away their adulthood via brazilians. The soft fur of the hair around her sex, trimmed but not gone, was wonderful under his mouth. At least he still had that.

She was gone by the time he woke up (he slept so much these days, for fuck’s sake, he used to be up at five in the morning to hit the gym but who needed the gym when your body was molded into the perfect shape?). No doubt she’d fled back to her collegiate friends, Adam thought, probably full of shame and regret.

But she’d left her phone in her rush to get out. Unable to suppress his still curious nature, he picked it up and with his cerebral augmentations, was able to figure out how to unlock her four-digit password easy enough.

_ Did you really fuck that bucket of bolts? Ugh,  _ one message read.

_ I can’t believe you went home with him! Ha! You are my hero. It’s like the ultimate sex robot _ , said another.

_ Is his dick also made of metal?  _ Yet another taunted.  _ Please tell me. Or show me! Pics! _

It shouldn’t have stung, it was so juvenile and petty. He was a grown-ass man, he had over a decade on these kids. They were just being assholes. 

All the same, instead of calling up the girl to give her the phone back, he threw it in the microwave and let it burn, the smell of radiating plastic not even stinging his fortified nasal cavity.

\

**_Before ..._ **

It wasn’t hard; if he skimmed the last ball just along the right edge, he could roll it past the black and sink. Adam leaned over the pool table, focused, lining up the cue between his knuckles. 

Then there was a hard pat on his bum.

“ _ Buddy _ ,” Charlie laughed, splashing his drink in the process. “That girl is here  _ again _ ! And she’s still ogling you!” 

Adam didn’t bother glancing over his shoulder, frowning. He enjoyed Charlie’s brashness, his easy extroversion, but this was one area where they would never see eye to eye.

“Dawson,” Adam commanded, resuming his bent over position. He could do this; he’d always been good at geometry, and it was just about the right amount of force at the right angle ... “ _ Dawson _ ,” he commanded again, using a firmer tone, like the one’s he used while they were running drills together as members of the DPD SWAT. Charlie turned around, leaning against the pool table. 

“What?” Charlie’s eyes continued to flicker to the college girls on the other side of the bar; Adam had noticed them when they’d come in, of course he had, he wasn’t  _ blind _ , but he’d kept a respectful distance. 

Adam pulled back and pushed the cue, knocking his last ball at exactly the right pressure and point, sinking it.

He stood up, stretching his neck, lazily relishing his new lead. “How about you think about the balls on the table, instead of fondling the ones in your pants?” Adam asked, the smallest upturn of his mouth giving away the good nature of his sting. Charlie guffawed and put down his pint, reaching for his cue.

Both their backs turned, neither of them saw the pair of girls saunter over to their table. In fact, it wasn’t until Charlie tried to strike a ball and missed that either of the girls spoke, startling both men.

“It’s a  _ gentle  _ touch,” she implored. Adam turned but the girl had already come over to their table, picking up a cue. She looked very young; he wondered if she was even in a college. She had the varsity jacket of Wayne State University on, and she wasn’t as self-conscious as a teenage girl, but  _ still _ . She just  _ felt  _ young. (Or maybe, he was finally starting to feel old, he thought wearily). The girl flipped her blonde hair over her shoulder and pronated over the pool table with a cue. “Let me show you.”

Her friend, a latina girl with shiny black locks, hung back, smiling a bit nervously at her friend’s boldness. Adam thought he’d probably prefer her -

“One for you, one for ...” Charlie muttered, shamelessly taking in the generous view the blonde had given them of her backside.

Adam was immediately pulled back to his senses. “Dawson, no.”

“Are you --”

“Hey,” the latina girl came closer so she could be heard. But at that exact moment, the blonde hit a perfect ball, sinking two of the three solids that Charlie had left on the table. She turned around triumphantly; it pained Adam to admit he was impressed.

“See?” the blonde smirked a little, even cocky enough to reach over and grab Charlie’s beer from the table and take a sip. No one said anything for a moment.

“You guys come here often, right?” the latina girl broke the silence. Adam raised an eyebrow at this while her friend hissed,  _ “Nicki _ !” 

“I just meant, um, my friends and are finally able to hit the bars and this is ... well, it’s a pretty cool place and you guys ... um ...” Nicki bit her lip, look impossibly adorable, Adam thought. Then another thought struck him.

“Finally able?” he asked, taking a seat on a bar stool nearby, leaning on his pool cue. He kept a steady (and he knew, intimidating) gaze on Nicki.

The blonde looked deeply annoyed. “Because we just moved here, that’s --”

“Term started three months ago,” Adam pointed out, frowning. 

To his relief, Charlie added, “How old are you guys?”

The blonde flushed -- probably with anger -- and Nicki flushed too, probably with embarrassment. “Well, Ontario’s only a few hours away and  _ technically _ there we’re allowed to drink at nineteen ...”

Adam scowled and shared a glance with Charlie. Charlie may have questionable judgement when it came to the women in his life, but even he knew better than to mess with jailbait.

“How about,” Charlie started, a bored but harsh tone emanating from his voice, “You girls finish up your homework, and then we’ll talk?” Both girls went bright red, even the latina girl in her darker skin, and they were quick to jump up and leave. Adam shook his head sadly.

“I don’t know what they were expecting,” he said once they were out of earshot. “They look like they just got clipped from the apron.”

“Some guys are into that thing,” Charlie shrugged, lining up a shot and not looking at Adam.

“Yeah,” Adam agreed. “And we arrest those guys.”

Charlie laughed, although it might have been because he’d sunk the last of Adam’s balls and had only a black one to go.


	2. D like Dignity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Super raw, almost no editing on this. Wrote it in one hour, so apologies for typos/mispellings.
> 
> TRIGGER WARNING: Very dubious consent.

 

**_These days ..._ **

He should have known better than to think that he’d do it of his own volition. In spite of being surgically reconstructed, facing the betrayal of the woman he’d been foolish enough to love, and having his brain hacked by a shadowy government organization, Adam still occasionally believed that there were people out there that genuinely wanted to help.

He didn’t like the way Valkov eyed him greedily, watching Adam’s leg twitch out of its usual effortless gait. He’d broken up a fight in Prague’s Red Light District the night before and gotten thrown into an electrical box. The charge would have killed the other Adam, but for _this_ Adam, he felt only technical difficulties; an appliance that had been shorted temporarily.

“You’ll need to take your pants off,” Valkov insisted, trying and failing to sound disinterested. Adam hated that he’d left his CASIE augment on; he hated, more, that Valkov knew that Adam could see the scientist’s pulse quicken, and didn’t care at all.

Adam wasn’t sure what exactly he’d been expecting. A routine health care exam? A friendly check up with his family physician?

Scowling behind his implanted sunglasses, he unbuttoned the front of his pants. Valkov didn’t even bother turning away. Adam almost gruffed, _You mind?_ , but this wasn’t a world where he was allowed the luxury of privacy any more.

He dropped his pants.

He swore Valkov’s pants tightened, but Adam ignored it and stepped out of his pants, now pooled around his feet.

“On the chair,” Valkov ordered, and gloriously, turned away to get whatever torturous instruments the mad man planned on using.

When Valkov sauntered back over, stringy black hair matted against his forehead, eyes bright and aroused, Adam almost recoiled. Almost went back to his pants and got the fuck out of there. Then his right leg spasmed again, a creak as his metal exoskeleton rubbed against itself, and Adam sat still.

Valkov had replaced the index finger on his mechanical hand with a soldering iron; the man was precise, then, Adam thought with some optimism. Sick fuck that he probably was. The worst part, of course, was that Valkov didn’t have the guts to bring it up himself. He would just stand in front of him, studying him, twirling the soldering-iron finger, chewing his tongue.

For fuck’s sake. “What am I going to owe you?” Adam finally asked heavily.

“What are you willing to pay?” Valkov countered, far too coy for Adam’s liking.

“I need this fixed,” Adam replied flatly, gesturing to his malfunctioning leg. He had money; living rent-free under Sarif, and then in an Alaskan recovery facility, had allotted him comfortable savings. That wasn’t what Valkov was after though; they both knew it. At least, not all of it.

“I charge a steep price,” Valkov mused. “It’s dangerous work, you know? Not smart to be giving out my services to undesirables. But we can make ... arrangements.”

“Arrangements.”

“I can be persuaded.”

“How about you fix my leg, then we’ll talk,” Adam ground out, just as his leg spasmed again. This time, painful electric currents went through his leg and into his still-human calf.

“Half now, half after,” Valkov countered. He dropped down into a squat, the swinging light bulb in his shop casting a shadow over his face. Crouched between Adam’s legs with a very hot iron in hand, Adam was wary of making Valkov annoyed.

“Okay,” Adam agreed, eyeing the soldering iron nervously. Should Valkov at least ... deactivate his pain receptors first? “What’s half?”

Valkov slid his left hand, still with all the fingers, over Adam’s thigh in response. Adam tensed as Valkov moved higher up his leg, stopping just short of Adam’s groin. “You are ...” Valkov breathed, admiration creeping into his voice. “ _Perfection_. The workmanship ... these parts don’t come cheap, you know? This ... oh ...” Valkov fingered a crevice on the dermal armour bolted into Adam’s chest, scooting closer. “This is a custom German piece, special operations grade ...” Valkov continued muttering fervently to himself, exploring Adam’s chest from his vantage point on the ground. Adam squeezed his eyes and leaned back, trying to relax.

When Adam’s leg jerked again, almost popping out of the chair, Valkov chuckled and pet the stray leg like a misbehaving dog. “There there,” he cooed. “We’ll make you happy again soon, huh?”

Then it happened; Valkov's metallic fingers slipped through Adam’s briefs. Adam almost backed up, but remembering what position he was in, he held steady while Valkov pulled his member out.

Adam tried to think about someone else; Megan, Katrina, hell, the augmented stripper that had been giving Adam dances much longer than normal. He almost convinced himself until he heard Valkov’s chuckle again. “Didn’t need to augment this, eh? Already very nice.” He ran his thumb up Adam’s length and in spite himself, Adam shuddered, hating his body’s treacherous response.

When Valkov’s mouth wrapped around his cock, Adam almost pushed him off. He could have thrown Valkov across the room and through the walls, onto the street. That was, of course, until the next Adam needed a patch up, and the only technician around who could fix him now had severe head trauma.

Valkov’s tongue ran up and down, and Adam slowly felt himself hardening. He had spent the last two years disassociating from the metal trap that had become his body, and he could do it again now. It’s no different from a surgical scalpel used on him while unconscious, or remotely hacking his audio augments to listen in on conversations. It was just a body now, anyways.

**_Before ..._ **

“Hey!” Adam rolled the window down of his police cruiser, pulling up against the curb. It was three in the morning in downtown Detroit; the shittiest patrol shift to draw. “Hey! Put him down!”

He was solo this night; unusual, and in this particular moment, very unfortunate. Unholstering his gun, Adam approached the two figures outside the tavern. One was a larger figure, male, grabbing another by the collar. The other one was scrawny looking; Adam couldn’t tell through the rain hitting the dirty streets, but he’d guess a small woman or a teenager.

The larger man turned, saw Adam’s police uniform, and threw the other figure into the road before bolting. It may have been early morning, but the streets were still buzzing with cabs taking their last passengers home for the night, and the scrawny figure wasn’t moving. _Fuck_. Chase the suspect or drag the victim out of the street?

Adam made his choice fast, running over to the hooded figure lying facedown in the street and flipping them over. It was a teenager; a young man, maybe sixteen or seventeen. Pasty pale and lips cracked, with the distinct dour smell of unwashed clothes on him. _Homeless_ , Adam decided quickly. A runaway, probably.

The young man was semi-concious at this point, a blackened eye betraying the beating he’d taken from the other man. Adam swore and lifted the boy up, taking him to his car.

Opening the back door, Adam slid the teenager in. Adam crawled in as well, closing the door behind them. In the dryness of the car, he checked the teenager’s breathing and pulse; healthy, he thought. Higher than normal but nothing that indicated any danger. Adam was about to turn and get out of the backseat and call for assistance when a hand shot out and grabbed his wrist.

Adam looked down, eyebrows raised. “You’re responsive,” he observed.

“No shit,” the teenager grumbled, grimacing in pain. He tried to adjust to sit up but Adam put his hand on the boy’s chest.

“Hey, no. Lie still, kid, you took a beating.”

The teenager collapsed back down from his elbows, groaning. “Fuck me. You a cop?”

“Yeah.”

“ _Fuck_.”

“What’s your name, kid?”

“Stop calling me _kid_. And I’m not fucking telling you.”

“All right,” Adam agreed. He moved to leave again but stopped when the boy cleared his throat nervously.

“You ... am I under arrest?”

“For getting beat up?”

“Look,” the kid struggled back into a sitting up position. “Look, I don’t want anything to do with cops. I’m fine, let me out.”

“I can’t do that,” Adam replied, stern but not unfriendly. “You’re hurt; maybe badly, to the head. You were barely conscious a few minutes ago.”

“It’s fine,” the kid insisted again. “I can’t be seen with cops. I fucking can’t. Just let me out of here. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“How old are you?”

The kid squirmed but lied, “Twenty-one.”

Adam snorted. “Nice try. I’m taking you to the hospital, and then we’re finding your parents.”

The kid’s eyes widened; for the first time, he really looked like a kid, frightened and desperate. “No, no way. I ... I ...” Then he did something odd, he shifted in his seat so that he was closer to Adam, and shaking his hood off his head, he said, “Just forget you met me. I could, you know, make you forget.”

Adam immediately tensed, edging away. “Pick your words wisely.”

“I am,” the young man insisted. He edged closer. “I’m just saying ... I’m pretty good at ... making people forget things, for a little while. I could ...” He gestured to Adam’s general pelvic area and Adam felt sick. “You know, if you just let me go and forget about me.”

Adam turned and opened the car door, getting out. “Hey!” the kid shouted out as the door closed. Adam walked around to the front of the car and got back behind the driver’s seat. “ _Hey!_ ” the kid repeated when Adam was back in the car. Through the cage, Adam could see the kid’s panicked and hurt face. “I was just ... I was just saying --”

“Listen,” Adam cut him off. “Listen to me. I’m fucking sorry for whatever happened to you, that you think this is what you need to do to care of yourself. But I’m not taking advantage of that; not of you. You get that?”

The teenager went silent in the back, scowling and pulling his hood back up. “You’re so fucking naive,” the kid had the nerve to spit at him. “It’s just how things work. It was an offer that you should just have taken.”

Adam ignored him as he started up the car again. The teenager continued, “I fucking hate optimistic assholes like you. I _hate_ you. You think you know everything but you fucking --”

“I know a lot,” Adam interrupted calmly. “But optimism is a choice, kid. I choose to believe in something, in spite of knowing.”

The kid huffed, crossing his arms. “Then you’re an idiot, too.” The kid sounded a little less certain though, a tiny less self-assured in his apathy towards the world, and that was something.


	3. A like Autonomy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very raw, almost no editing done. Apologies for typos! I might come back and fix it later, I just wanted to get something out. My creative brain has been starving for some work lately.

**_These days ..._ **

“You’ve done it a hundred times before.”

Adam knew this; he was capable of counting the lives he’d collected in the pursuit of justice and order, or in this case, corporate stability and rising investor dividends. He wasn’t incapable of arithmetic; quite the contrary. He was good at math.

(Before, anyways, when he knew that all the neurons in his brain were real and his own: they’d fired off calculations well for a human brain. He just wasn’t sure the new brain counted as being _talented_ at anything. Could machines have talent?)

Adam said nothing.

David ran a hand through his hair, his augmented hand catching the light from his floor-to-ceiling office walls. They were beautiful, Adam thought, and made David’s office look like a palace. Thankfully, they were also only viewable through one-side and bulletproof, at Adam’s insistence. “You were choked up, frozen, it’s fine, Adam. It happens. We did the right thing.”

“ _We_ ,” Adam said finally, quietly. It was a low slung word but not a growl; Adam was too many months past angry to growl the words.

David seemed to brighten at Adam’s admission, turning to look at him and smiling encouragingly. “We, son. We’re in this together.” Adam said nothing again, but this time, he had to bite his tongue. It would do no good, he reminded himself. It would do no good to look like an unshackled cyborg, breaking the laws of robotics already. Far too dangerous to look insubordinate now that he knew what David could do.

‘You know, most people only get to hear that figuratively in their lives,” David continued, obviously pleased with his winning words and gearing up for a speech. “Most people just have to trust that they’re in it together with their colleagues, their employer, their friends.” David walked over to his desk, pulling open a drawer and grabbing a scotch from inside. There were two clean glasses on the mantle close to Adam, but Adam couldn’t bring himself to go fetch them for his master.

Be a good boy, he thought sullenly, before immediately trying to suppress the thought. He tried to remember what Megan had said about positivity; _you have to think positive thoughts_ , Adam told himself. You have to keep thinking positive and you can rewire your brain to be positive, and you’ll change your outlook. It’s science.

If David noticed Adam’s thoughtlessness, he ignored it, and instead moved to get the glasses from the mantle himself. Adam remained in the armchair across from Sarif’s desk, trying to repeat the words to himself. Positive. It’s about rewiring your brain.

 _Or you could just ask Sarif for an upgrade_. David handed him a glass.

Fuck. _Positive_ , think _positive._

“ -- so really, we’re all liable for this, and if that’s what you’re worried about, don’t be, all right?” David reached over and poured Adam a finger of scotch while he perched on the edge of his desk. “Your actions are Sarif Industries actions, quite literally. There’s not a lot of people I’d trust with that kind of level of autonomy.”

Adam _chose_ not to crush his glass in his powerful hand at that precise moment. He chose it. (Mostly because he remembered it would feel too much like thing neck bones cracking under his hands, snapping and crumbling like sticks ...)

He chose to keep his anger in check. That was a positive development.

“Autonomy?” Adam breathed. He looked up sharply, knowing that David could see the annoyance and disgust in his eyes. “Really? Of all the ways to describe the power I have, you’d call it _autonomy_?”

David’s eyes crinkled in sadness, a frown etching onto his face. “Adam, I mean in trust. I know you don’t like it when we, ah, _influence_ your body but that won’t happen again. I hear you, and I understand your concerns. I am on _your side_ , Adam” -- _and in your side, controlling your side with full access to your side --_ “and I’m not going to let you carry this alone. What would you have done differently, anyways?”

Adam thought of the poor young man’s face, the fear in his eyes melting into hostility. _So_ young, maybe only eighteen or nineteen, and convinced that a life in Detroit crime was the only chance he’d had. His eyes had been blue, bright blue, and Adam had thought just maybe, he could have talked him down. He could have taken him down with a headlock, knocked him unconscious, and continued on his way through the vent past him.

“... You told me you wanted lethal takedown equipment, I assumed that you weren’t planning on wrestling with these guys ...”

That terrifying moment, when he’d felt himself lose control of his hands ... he was watching his body move now, a prisoner, not even able to move his neck and look at where his feet were, look around him to see if more men were on their way ...

“... These guys are thugs, Adam, you -- _we_ \-- did a good thing ...”

... Not able to look away from the boy’s eyes as shiney black hands wrapped around his neck. That was not a face Adam would ever forget, no matter how many lives he’d taken.

“I’m proud of us, Adam. We made the right choice and we got you out of a sticky situation alive. Together, with so many people watching your back, you’re going to accomplish extraordinary things, Adam. I’m sure. And I’m going to help you get there.”

I didn’t kill him, Adam thought. I didn’t kill him, but I couldn’t do a damn thing to stop myself from killing him either. That, he supposed, bitter and furious, too empty for tears and too tired for shouting, was extraordinary, he supposed. He was a witness and a murderer now.

 

**_Before ..._ **

“What are you going to tell them?” the nurse asked, snipping threads from the stitching she’d applied to his chest. The cut had been deep, the shattered glass from the building had sliced through his SWAT armour and into his skin. Adam was so numb and sore that he almost hadn’t felt the sutering at all.

“The truth,” Adam said flatly, moving to sit up from the hospital bed. The nurse sushed him, putting a hand on his chest to push him back down.

“Don’t get up,” she warned sharply. “You’ll feel light headed and I don’t think I can pick you up and put you back on this bed if you pass out.”

Adam gave a small laugh in spite of himself; the nurse was short but stout looking, and Adam doubted lifting him would be a problem. She looked stern but capable, tough but gentle; he liked her. She was exactly what he wanted to see in an emergency ward nurse.

She reached over beside him and pulled a bandage out of a package. She started cutting it to fit the wound on his chest, frowning while she worked.

“You’re not convinced,” Adam pointed out, watching her expression carefully.

“It’s just ...” The nurse sighed, looking up from her work. “I’ve seen this before. I know that’s it’s their choice, it’s their bodily autonomy, and I’m all about that -- heavens know I’ve been pro-choice and pro-euthanasia for a long time, but ... when you choose to ... _modify_ yourself like that, you make yourself _dangerous_.”

"How can a kid even consent to being augmented?” Adam wondered, not intending to be rhetorical. The question hung over his head, cloudy and frightening. “Who gives a kid augments like that?”

“I don’t know,” the nurse agreed, turning around and rummaging through a cupboard. “I don’t know, but I do know that it couldn’t have been anyone good. And I’m sorry that the kid had to go through that, I’m sorry that someone did that to them, but you could have --” she paused, pulling medical tape from one drawer.

Coming back to him, she laid the bandage over the wound and started taping the sides. “The rumour is that you had orders to shoot.”

“I did,” he confessed, wincing when she applied pressure to the wound.

“You know the press is going to crazy over this, they love a good heroic cop story, almost as much as they love a police brutality story ... and frankly, I’m not sure if you’re a fuck up or the best cop we’ve got.”

Adam laughed for real this time, immediately groaning when the ripple of movement pulled on the fresh stitches. Stilling himself, he said, “I had to make a choice. Augmented or not, he was just a kid -- I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t do it, and I’d make the same choice again if given another chance.”

“People could have gotten hurt.”

“That kid could have gotten hurt.”

“But your superiors, they’re --”

“Going to be furious,” Adam agreed. “But at the end of the day, I’m the one pulling the trigger. I’m the one who has to live with the blood on my hands. And I didn’t get into this job to kill kids that need help. A smack on the head, definitely, but they need help.” Adam grimaced as she finished her taping job. “Can I sit up now?”

“No,” she immediately replied. Adopting her softer, more conversational tone, she started cleaning up the packaging and said, “You know, I don’t know if I’d have done the same.”

“You can’t,” Adam shrugged. “You can’t until you’re in the moment.”

“But ...” she seemed to struggle for a moment, before finding the words. “But maybe that’s why I’m not in the field like you, why I don’t belong there. I’m ... I’m glad, that people like you are the ones making those calls.” She smiled nervously. “I hope that doesn’t sound like I’m copping out.”

Adam frowned, turning his head to look at her. “No,” he said solemnly. “No, not at all. I know what I did. I know why I did it. I can be proud of that.”

“And the consequences?”

“I’ll take it,” Adam replied. “I’ll deal with it. As long as I’m in control, they can’t touch me.”


End file.
